Features
“Incident at San Miguel” – new novel set in the Cuban Revolution in 1958 provides rich insight into Jewish life in Cuba
By BERNIE BELLAN The history of Cuba’s Jewish community is quite an interesting one. According to Wikipedia, “more than 24,000 Jews lived in Cuba in 1924, and still more immigrated to the country in the 1930s. Following the 1959 communist revolution, 94% of the country’s Jews emigrated, most of them to the United States. In 2007 an estimated 1,500 known Jewish Cubans remained in the country, overwhelmingly located in Havana.”
I’ll get into my review of a book set in Cuban in the 1950s later, but first I wanted to provide some background about the very important role that Canada has played in helping the Cuban Jewish community, especially since 1973.
Following are some excerpts from past issues of The Jewish Post that will provide the reader with a basic understanding of how helpful Canada has been to Cuba’s Jewish community:
From the Nov. 24, 1983 issue: “Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) will send $30,000 worth of religious articles and supplies to the Jewish community of Cuba, the World Jewish Congress has announced here. Ever since the U.S. severed relations with Cuba in 1960, the CJC has looked after the needs of Cuban Jews” (emphasis mine).
From the November 17, 1999 issue, headlined: “Canada played key role, helping Cuban Jews emigrate to Israel”:
I, myself, wrote the following: “On October 11, the Globe & Mail broke a story in this country headlined ‘Canada aids Cuban exodus – Secret transit of Jews has gone on 25 years.’ “
That story went on to detail how Canada had facilitated the emigration of some 400 Cuban Jews to Israel, beginning in 1973. (Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with Israel at the time of the Yom Kippur War.)
Subsequent to that story I was able to interview Lloyd Axworthy, who was Canada’s Foreign Minister at that time. I asked Axworthy about Canada’s role in helping Cuban Jews emigrate to Israel. He explained that, “beginning in the early 70s, we undertook to set up what we call the Israeli interests unit in our embassy (in Havana), staffed by a locally-engaged person, not only to represent Israeli interests, but also to expedite the emigration from Cuba of members of the Jewish community.
“Since it’s been in operation, there have been about 400 visas that have been obtained. What we do is simply work it from Havana to the Israeli embassy in Ottawa.”
That interview went on to explore how Canada had kept its role relatively quiet, although apparently it was very well known within the Jewish community in Cuba that if you wanted to emigrate you should approach the Canadian embassy.
As Axworthy noted during that interview, “We’ve been quite careful to keep it low key. There was no point in broadcasting it, because there are sensitivities in Cuba to such things.”
I came across another interesting aspect to the role Canada has played in helping Cuba’s Jewish community in 2013 when I learned that Canada’s then-ambassador to Cuba was someone by the name of Matthew Levin, who was an old childhood friend. I emailed Matthew in January 2013, asking him whether he would consent to an interview and he responded warmly.
He also happened to mention something else that I found quite interesting. In response to my telling him about my interview with Lloyd Axworthy many years prior, Matthew wrote in an email to me that “the connection with Lloyd Axworthy and Cuban Jews is of great interest. Coincidentally my wife is now coordinating the Aliyah program in Cuba from the Embassy.”
Alas, much as Matthew was willing to be interviewed, an apparatchik from what was then called the Department of International Affairs and Foreign Trade stepped into the mix and informed me that I couldn’t actually speak to Matthew; instead, I was told, I could email whatever questions I wanted to ask in advance.
I explained to the apparatchik that I wanted to do a folksy interview with someone who was an old friend and that emailing questions would deprive what I was wanting to do of any spontaneity. You can guess how far that went.
In any event, all this serves as a prelude to a review of a book that I actually finished reading a couple of months ago – and had wanted to review at that time. The book is called “Incident at San Miguel,” by A. J. Sidransky. Mr. Sidransky (and I did ascertain that he was a man, although it’s always difficult when you only know an author’s initials) had sent me a review copy of the book back in November, but I didn’t get around to beginning reading it until February.
After I did finish the book and emailed Mr. Sidransky to tell him how good I thought the book was – and that I was now ready to publish a review, I was somewhat surprised when he asked me to hold off publishing the review, writing “Could you hold the review for May? The book release is May 19. Right now we only have preorders for kindle to be delivered May 19.”
However, I just took a look and saw that “Incident at San Miguel” is available for pre-ordering, either in paperback on Amazon or in Kobo format.
Review of “Incident at San Miguel”
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the book itself. The foreword to the book is written by someone by the name of Miriam Bradman Abrahams, who explains that she is the Cuban-born daughter of Cuban Jewish refugees. Her family had been separated from the family that remained in Cuba for over 40 years, although some of her Cuban family had been able to visit Ms. Abrahams’ family in New York in 2001. Ms. Abrahams had long wanted to visit Cuba, she explains, but wasn’t able to do so until 2008.
She told the story of her family to A. J. Sidransky, who is a Spanish-speaking writer of fiction. Mr. Sidransky took elements of Ms. Abrahams’ story and mixed in some fictitious parts to produce “Incident at San Miguel.”
Here is a synopsis of the book: “Havana, Cuba. December 1958. Two brothers find themselves on opposite sides of Castro’s revolution. One dark night, after rescuing a leader of the revolt under house arrest, one brother finds himself hunted. The other, an influential attorney, must make a choice. Help his brother, placing the whole family at risk, or let Batista’s forces capture him. His decision will haunt them both for the rest of their lives. How far will we go to protect those we love? Based on a true story, Incident at San Miguel takes us there.”
Although I was somewhat familiar with the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s ascent to power, I was fascinated to learn that it was quite some time after Castro and his followers had taken over Cuba before he began to introduce communism to that island.
“Incident at San Miguel” begins in 1958, which was shortly before the then-dictator of Cuba, Filgenico Batista, was overthrown by Castro.
Two brothers, Aaron and Moises Cohan, find themselves on opposite sides of what is transpiring at that moment in Cuba, although, as the novel opens, we see that the brothers do get along quite nicely. Aaron is a lawyer, working in the Batista administration, while Moses is an economist who is aligned with the revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the government.
As the story develops we learn quite a bit about the Jewish community in Cuba at that time. Although most Jews would have been considered middle class, a number of them had become very wealthy businesspeople. The majority of Cubans, however, were quite poor.
In his own introduction, Mr. Sidransky provides an analysis why Jews were continually subjected to persecution by totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, writing that “As in all totalitarian regimes, there is always a boogeyman. In the case of the Nazis and the Hungarian Fascists in the 1930s and 40s that boogeyman was the Jews. In the case of communist systems, including Hungary under Soviet communism, and Castro’s Cuba, the boogeyman is the entrepreneurial or capitalist class. In the absence of a religious, ethnic, or racial minority to blame for the nations’ problems, Communism points its finger at an economic class to which it ascribes the suffering of its people and the nation.”
And, as successful members of that economic class – at least to some extent, it was hardly a surprise that Jews suffered under the Castro regime once communism became solidly entrenched as the economic model for Cuba.
But, as “Incident at San Miguel” relates, it was not at all clear what was in store for Cuba in the late 1950s. Batista’s secret police were everywhere, revolutionaries who were found out were either imprisoned or worse, executed, and despite the continued inroads that Castro’s and other revolutionaries seemed to be making, life in Havana, at least, continued in what seemed to be a normal fashion.
Moises Cohan, though, finds himself caught up in a daring plot to free a former professor of his, who is a hero to revolutionaries, and who has been held under house arrest by the Batista regime. Hence the name “Incident at San Miguel” because the particular incident in question, in which an attempt to free the professor, leads to a whole mess of intrigue as a result.
Moises finds himself on the run and seeks Aaron’s help in being able to escape. Aaron is torn between two worlds. He has been promoted to a senior position within the regime and, helping his brother would not only be a betrayal of that regime, it would be exceedingly dangerous.
Time moves on and on New Year’s Eve, January 1, 1959, the Batista regime folds and Castro’s revolutionaries march into Havana.
Mixed in with the political intrigue are the relationships the two brothers have developed with two vastly different women. Aaron’s fiancée, Beatriz, herself comes from a prosperous Jewish family, and she is perfectly at home with Aaron’s parents, Esther and Rafael.
Moises’ lover, Ana Teresa, in contrast, is a dedicated revolutionary whose first order of business is not romance, but fighting. Moises keeps his relationship with Ana Teresa a secret from his parents, knowing that they would be devastated to learn that he has taken up with a non-Jewish woman.
In time, both Moises and Ana Teresa rise to senior levels within the new Castro regime, yet their romance begins to flounder. Moises is an idealist who believes strongly in the ostensible goal of the revolution to bring about greater equality among the classes. Ana Teresa, it turns out, is a ruthless – and cynical, revolutionary, who is quite prepared to compromise her ideals if it means entrenching the new regime. When it becomes clearer, however, that the new regime wants to bring about equality by leveling the upper and middle classes, Moises begins to become increasingly disillusioned with what is happening – and with his lover.
A fascinating subplot develops when Moises happens to stumble upon a scheme whereby someone in the regime is reaping huge financial rewards through extorting Cuban businessmen, many of whom happen to be Jewish. Reading how Moises undertakes to get at the heart of this corruption introduces an exciting element of suspense into the novel.
We also learn how difficult it quickly became once the new regime was in place for Cubans to obtain exit visas. By this time Aaron and Beatriz have a young baby. The horrible dilemma with which Aaron has to deal is that bureaucrats are willing to let Aaron and Beatriz leave, but their child is denied permission.
That sets in motion a whole new set of challenges for Aaron – who would also love to be able to get both his and Beatriz’s parents out of the country. The parents, however, have a strong attachment to Cuba and are not interested in leaving the country.
I was somewhat surprised to learn that 94% of Cuba’s Jewish population did leave Cuba following the revolution – given how difficult obtaining exit visas was, but when I tried to deduce just how many individuals that figure of 94% represented, I wasn’t able to figure that out. If Cuba’s Jewish population was 24,000 in 1924, as Wikipedia says, and there was an influx of Jews from Europe in the 1930s, then the number of Jews who left Cuba following the revolution had to have been well over 23,000. How did they all get out, I wonder – especially after reading this book and learning how difficult it was for anyone to leave the country after a certain point? I’d certainly like to learn more about when and how so many Jewish Cubans were able to leave following the revolution.
Yet, in reading about the wonderful texture of life in Cuba prior to 1959 – at least for those who were able to enjoy a reasonably prosperous standard of living, such as the Cohan family did, life certainly seemed idyllic in many respects. The descriptions of the kinds of foods that are native to Cuba that the Cohan family was able to incorporate into their daily fare are quite tantalizing, as are the descriptions of the wonderful climate and the beautiful countryside.
“Incident at San Miguel” also provides many insights into the dynamics that underlay the Cuban revolution, including how much democratic ideals inspired so many of the young revolutionaries. While Fidel Castro himself only makes a cameo appearance in the book, Che Guevara plays a prominent – and altogether despicable role. While the book is a work of fiction, with many elements based on the true story of Miriam Bradham Abrahams’ family, the author has certainly done extensive research into life in Cuba in the 1950s. There are some vivid descriptions of how business was conducted – and how much corruption played a part in both the old and new regimes.
A political thriller with many romantic aspects and a vivid portrayal of a country that had so much promise had it not been exploited by one dictatorial regime after another, “Incident at San Miguel” is a riveting read.
Features
Patterns of Erasure: Genocide in Nazi Europe and Canada
By LIRON FYNE When we think of the word genocide, our minds often jump to the Holocaust, the mass-scale, systemic government-led murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, whose unprecedented scale and methods led to the very term ‘genocide’ being coined. On January 27th, 2026, we will bow our heads for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 80th year of remembrance.
Less frequently do we connect genocidal intent to the campaign against Indigenous peoples in Canada; the forced displacement, cultural destruction, and systematic killing that sought to erase Indigenous peoples. The genocide conducted by the Nazis and the genocidal intent of the Canadian government, though each unique in scale, motive, and implementation, share many conceptual similarities. Both were driven by ideologies of racial superiority, executed through governmental precision, and justified by the perpetrators as a moral mission.
At their core rests the concept of dehumanization. In Nazi Germany, Jews were viewed as subhuman, contaminated, and a threat to the ‘Aryan’ race. In Canada, Indigenous peoples were represented as obstacles to ‘progress’ and seen as hurdles to a Christian, Eurocentric nation. These ideas, this dehumanization, turned human beings into problems to be solved. Adolf Hitler called it the ‘Jewish question,’ leading to an official policy in 1942 called the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question,’ whereas Canadian officials called it the ‘Indian problem.’ The language is similar, a belief that one group’s existence endangers the destiny of another. The methods of extermination differed in practice and outcome, but the language of intent resembles one another.
The Holocaust’s concentration camps and carefully engineered gas chambers were designed for efficient, industrial-scale killing, resulting in mass murder. The well-organized plan of systematic degradation, deadly riots, brutal camp conditions, and designated killing centres were only a few of the ways the Nazis worked to eliminate the Jews. The Canadian government’s weapons were policy, assimilation and abandonment. Such as the Indian Act, reserves, and residential schools, which were all meant to ‘kill the Indian in the child,’ cutting generations off from their languages, families, and cultures. Thousands of Indigenous children died in residential schools, buried in unmarked graves near schools that called themselves places of learning. Both systems were backed by either religion or ideology; Nazi ideology brought together racist eugenic policies and virulent antisemitism, while Canada’s genocidal intent was supported by Christian Protestantism claiming to save Indigenous souls by erasing their heritage.
The Holocaust was a six-year campaign of complete industrialized extermination, mass murder with a mechanized intent, on a scale that remains historically unique. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes Canada’s indigenous genocide as a cultural one that unfolded over centuries through assimilation and the destruction of indigenous languages and identities. The Holocaust ended with the liberation of the camps and a global recognition of the atrocities committed. However, the generational trauma and dehumanization of antisemitism carry on. For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the effects of the genocidal intent continue to this day, visible in displacement, poverty, and intergenerational trauma. While these histories differ in form and timeline, both are rooted in dehumanization and the belief that some lives are worth less than others.
A disturbing similarity lies in the aftermath: silence and denial. The Holocaust forced the world to confront the atrocity with the vow of ‘Never Again,’ which has now been unearthed and reformed as ‘Never Again is Now,’ after the October 7th, 2023, massacre by Hamas. The largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, and the denial of the atrocities committed on October 7th, highlight the same Holocaust denial we see rising around the world. In Canada, for decades, the genocidal intent was hidden behind narratives of kindness and social progress. Only in recent years, through survivor testimony for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the discovery of unmarked graves, has the truth gained recognition. But acknowledgment without justice risks repeating the same patterns of erasure.
Comparing these atrocities committed is not about comparing pain or scale; it is about understanding the shared systems that enabled them. Both demonstrate how racism, superiority, and dehumanization can be used to justify the destruction of human beings. Remembering is not enough in Canada. True remembrance demands accountability, land restitution, reparations, and education that confronts Canada’s ongoing colonial legacy. When we say ‘Never Again is Now’, we hold collective action to combat antisemitism in all forms. The same applies to Truth & Reconciliation; it must be more than a slogan; we must apply action to Truth & ReconciliACTION.
Liron Fyne is a 12th-grade student at Gray Academy of Jewish Education in Winnipeg. They are currently a Kenneth Leventhal High School Intern at StandWithUs Canada, a non-profit education organization that combats antisemitism.
Features
Will the Iranian Regime Collapse?
By HENRY SREBRNIK When U. S. President Donald Trump restored “maximum sanctions” pressure against Iran a year ago, he was clear about its goals: Deny Iran a nuclear weapon, dismantle its terror proxy network and stop its ballistic missile program.
The government in Tehran has fended off through violence and repression previous large-scale protests but now may limit or hold its fire. After all, Trump has been willing to go where no U.S. president has, including the authorization of a strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity last year and the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Trump has demonstrated that his government is willing to use military measures to overthrow an enemy regime, and Tehran was, perhaps surprisingly, one of the closest allies of Maduro. The two countries were united by their approach to international sanctions and their ability to survive in American enmity.
Over the past three decades, this combination of political sympathy and anti-American rhetoric developed into a complex web of cooperation involving oil, finance, industry and security.
Since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, came to power in 1999, relations between Tehran and Caracas tightened significantly. During his first visit to Iran in 2001, Chavez declared that he had arrived “to help pave the way for peace, justice, stability, and progress in the 21st century.”
Nearly 300 economic, infrastructure, gas, and oil agreements were signed, worth billions of dollars. At one point, Venezuela even considered selling F-16 fighter jets to Tehran, while Iran supplied Venezuela with advanced Mohajer-6 drones. All this now comes to an end.
Maduro’s removal constitutes a severe blow to the operational base of Tehran in South America. With Maduro gone, “Iran is now in the eye of the storm,” observed Fawaz Gerges, Middle East analyst and professor of international relations at London’s School of Economics and Political Science.
“The big lesson out of the fall of the Venezuelan regime is not Colombia, not Greenland,” he said. “The Iranians know that Iran is the next target. Not only of the Trump administration, but also of the Benjamin Netanyahu government” in Israel.
Israel, which has long perceived Iran as an existential threat, launched 12 days of what it described as pre-emptive strikes on military and nuclear sites in Iran last June, with U.S. war planes attacking three major nuclear facilities.
They now see Iran as being cornered, extremely vulnerable and weak at this moment. “I think they’re piling on the pressure. They’re hoping that they could really, basically bring about regime change in Iran,” Gerges added.
On Jan. 12, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian shifted focus away from Iran’s stuttering economy and suppression of dissent and towards his country’s longstanding geopolitical adversaries, Israel and the United States. Speaking on state broadcaster IRIB, Pezeshkian claimed that “the same people that struck this country” during Israel’s 12-day war last June were now “trying to escalate these unrests with regard to the economic discussion.
“They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have brought in some terrorists from outside,” he charged, alleging that those responsible had attacked a bazaar in the northern city of Rasht and set mosques on fire.
“My assumption is that the Mossad is active in Tehran behind the scenes,” contended Ahron Bregman, who teaches at King’s College London and has written extensively on Israeli intelligence operations. “Israeli officials are unusually quiet.” There are clear instructions not to talk and “not to be seen to be involved in any way.”
“I’d be very surprised if Israeli agents were not active within Iran right now,” defence analyst Hamze Attar maintained. “They’re going to be doing everything they can to make sure these protests continue and escalate.”
But anything that Israel is up to will of course be covert. This restraint is a calculated approach taken to avoid disrupting a process of regime change that may be driven internally. Intervening would only confirm the regime’s claims that the protesters are “Zionist agents,” a charge that could shift popular anger onto the demonstrators and douse the movement.
“Any visible involvement would give the Iranians an excuse to intensify repression,” explained Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and former head of Iran research in an Israeli military intelligence branch
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, who maintains he wants peace with Israel and the United States, suggests Iran faces a historic moment. “In all these years, I’ve never seen an opportunity as we see today in Iran. Iranian people are more than ever committed to bringing an end to this regime,” he stated. “By God, it is about time that Iran gets its opportunity to free itself from a tyrannical regime.”
Iranians have seen the regime and its backers exposed and humiliated by an American administration and Israel, and they are taking advantage of it. But it won’t be easy. This is a religious nomenklatura that will use all means at its disposal to hold on to power. Never underestimate their cruelty and resolve
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
New autobiography by Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm – who went on to testify in trials of two Nazi war criminals
Book Review by Julie Kirsh, Former Sun Media News Research Director
My parents were Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors who arrived in Toronto in 1951 without family or friends. In the late 50s my mother met Hedy Bohm outside of our downtown apartment and quickly connected with her. Both women had suffered the loss of all family in the Shoah. Over the years our families’ custom became sharing our dining table with the Bohm family for the Jewish high holidays. The tradition continues today with the second generation.
Hedy was born in 1928 in the city of Oradea in Romania. She was a pampered only child, adored by her father and very much attached to her mother. Although Hedy was an adolescent, she was kept from hearing about the rising anti-semitism around her in her hometown. She was protected and sheltered like any child. Memoirs from other adolescents like Elie Wiesel, aged 15 in Auschwitz, Samuel Pisar, liberated at 16, and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who was found in Buchenwald by American soldiers at age 8, made me wonder about the resilience and strength of children who survived like Hedy.
Hedy was only 16 years old when she walked through the gates of hell, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hedy’s poignant retelling of this pivotal moment in her young life was the sudden separation from her father and moments later from her mother. Somehow Hedy’s mother got ahead of her upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Hedy called out to her. Her mother turned and they looked at each other. A Nazi guard prevented Hedy from joining her mother. Hedy has always been tormented by this moment of separation. Did her mother know that she was walking to her death?
Hedy writes that she was focused on survival in the camps. She concentrated on eating whatever food was given and keeping clean by washing daily in icy, cold water before the roll call. When she contracted diarrhea, she remembered her mother’s homemade remedy of gnawing on charred wood. Her naivete and innocence were overcome with a strong inner determination to stay alive so that she could see her mother again.
Hedy recounts the terrible hunger that everyone endured. One day, spotting some carrots in a warehouse, Hedy was appointed by her aunt to run and grab what she could. Luckily she evaded the armed guard who would have shot her on the spot.
On April 14, 1945, Hedy’s day of liberation, she learned the terrible fate of her mother. The return home for the survivors was a further tragedy when they realized the loss of family and community.
In her memoir, Hedy describes meeting Imre, an older boy from her town whom she eventually married. Their flight from Romania to Budapest to Pier 21 in Halifax to Toronto is documented in harrowing detail.
Hedy recounts how in Toronto no one wanted to know the stories of the survivors. This was a world before Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1961 and the TV series, The Holocaust, in 1978. The floodgates for information from the survivors opened late in their lives.
In Toronto, after many failed enterprises, Imre and Hedy stumbled onto the shoe selling business. In 1959, they leased a small shoe store close to Honest Ed’s in downtown Toronto. Surprisingly, the business according to Hedy, became very profitable. Many years later, after Imre’s sudden death due to a heart attack, Hedy continued to manage their shoe business while taking care of her daughter, Vicky and son, Ronnie.
In 1996, Hedy was introduced to Rabbi Jordan Pearlson. Their love match made Hedy feel that she had been given a wonderful gift, late in life, which she welcomed.
Jordan died in 2008. Hedy endured and carried on with yoga and tai chi both as a teacher and devoted practitioner.
A new purpose in life opened up for Hedy when she was invited to be a speaker for the Holocaust Education Centre (now the Toronto Holocaust Museum). She spoke to mostly non-Jewish students whom she visited at their schools outside of Toronto.
Visiting Auschwitz with the March of the Living for the first time in 2010, Hedy faced her fears about returning to the place that held the horrors. She was fortunate to meet Jordana Lebowitz, a student from Toronto who developed a multimedia presentation called ShadowLight. Hedy’s contribution to teaching others about the Holocaust by sharing her experience, is immeasurable.
In 2014, Hedy was asked to be a witness at the trial of Oskar Groning , “the accountant of Auschwitz”, in Germany. In 2016, she appeared as a witness for the trial of the Nazi guard, Reinhold Hanning. He was sentenced to a mere five years in prison and Groning died before he could start his jail sentence. In having the courage to participate in these war criminal trials, Hedy spoke for her parents and all the innocents who could not speak for themselves.
Hedy’s talks to students always include an admonishment to be kind, to trust in themselves and work for the greater good. She rose above her own fears of sharing her story by speaking publicly.
Hedy’s story of survival and perseverance will remain a beacon to future generations, ensuring that hope and good will endure even in the worst of times.
Reflection
by Hedy Bohm
Published in 2026 by The Azrieli Foundation
To order a copy of the book go to https://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/titles/reflection/